Page 84 of The Masterful Mr. Montague

A minute later, he guided her out of the office and down the stairs to the street, Foster and Pringle following close behind.

The house in Lowndes Street was as dismal and chilly as the last time she’d been there, but Violet barely registered the gloomy atmosphere. Having let them in via the front door, Montague waited only until Pringle shut it behind them before waving her up the stairs.

She led the way to the first floor and Lady Halstead’s bedroom. Entering, she went straight to the chest of drawers.

“The lock,” Montague said.

She threw him a look, pulled out the small drawer that formed the base of the mirror sitting atop the chest, reached inside, and drew out a small key.

Montague looked disgusted. As she fitted the key into the lock in the middle drawer of the three that formed the top level of the large chest, he glanced at Foster. “That’s why I do not allow my clients to keep their own share certificates unless they possess a safe.”

Stifling a smile, very conscious of the excitement bubbling through her veins, Violet turned the key, heard the lock click open, then she tugged on the round wooden handle, and slid the drawer out.

Everyone crowded around to peer inside.

Three thick rolls of share certificates, each tied with a ribbon, lay neatly aligned, filling the bottom of the drawer. “Well,” Montague said, studying the evidence, “we knew Sir Hugo had purchased lots of shares.”

Reaching inside, he lifted out the three rolls, confirming just how thick each was. “Going through these is going to take time.” He met Violet’s gaze. “I’ll be taking these with me when we leave—they are far too valuable to be left in an empty house. Close the drawer, and let’s go downstairs.”

She did, and they did; repairing to the dining room, they used the table to unroll and spread out the certificates. Pringle commandeered the salt cellars and some cutlery to act as paperweights.

They searched through one roll, then the second, and finally the third.

Montague laid the last certificate down. “No certificate for those Grand Junction Railway Company shares.”

After a moment, he looked at Foster and Pringle. “Gather these up and take them back to the office. Pringle, I want you and Slocum to take an official inventory before Slocum locks them away, then, Foster, you can check the inventory against the list you and Gibbons prepared. If you find any further discrepancy, send word to me at Albemarle Street.”

“Yes, sir.” Both Foster and Pringle started to gather the certificates.

Montague rose and drew back Violet’s chair.

She searched his eyes. “Where are we going?”

Montague met her gaze. “To tell Stokes, and the others, too. This is far too important for them not to know.”

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Montague left his office and took a hackney to Albemarle Street.

On leaving the Lowndes Street house the previous afternoon, he and Violet had gone to Scotland Yard, but Stokes and Barnaby had been out; Stokes’s sergeant had recognized Montague and told him that Stokes had said that he and Adair would be visiting various locales to check Walter Camberly’s alibis.

Denied the most appropriate outlet for their building excitement, Montague and Violet had headed for Albemarle Street. There, they’d had to wait for Penelope and Griselda, who had earlier returned from an outing aimed at verifying the alibis of the Halstead and Camberly ladies, but had subsequently taken their children for an airing in Grosvenor Square. Rather than chase after them, Violet had suggested a late afternoon tea; suddenly realizing he’d been famished, Montague had agreed. They’d sat in the pleasant parlor and sipped and nibbled, and he had started to think through his next steps aloud.

Then Penelope and Griselda had arrived; not having any news of their own to impart, they’d been keen and eager to hear what Montague and Violet had together discovered.

Immediately grasping the significance, Penelope had sent a summons to Stokes and her husband, enticingly stating that a breakthrough had occurred and that they needed to return to Albemarle Street forthwith to learn its substance.

Then, of course, the four of them had had to wait with mounting impatience for Stokes and Adair to arrive. Once they had . . .

In the end, they’d all stayed to dine, the discussion over the dinner table rife with supposition, hypothesis, and suggestions as to how they might best proceed. Everyone had agreed that the missing share certificate was a major clue and that they needed to learn who presently held it—who had received the recent large dividend—with all possible speed, but at that point, the group had divided into three camps. Stokes and Penelope had been all for barreling ahead regardless of how much noise and dust they raised. Montague and Barnaby, however, had urged caution and care in taking their next steps, while Violet and Griselda had sat back and weighed the merits of both arguments. Ultimately, it had been agreed that, despite the acknowledged urgency over identifying the villain—already a murderer three times over—before he either murdered again or, alternatively, fled, caution and circumspection were nevertheless required in dealing with such a matter.

As Barnaby had said, “The police marching into a share registry and demanding to see their books—even assuming you can—will only cause outrage and resistance on many fronts, none of which are pertinent to this investigation, and none of which will help us in the least.”

Montague had nodded. “Indeed. It may not seem so, but in such a case, asking one question at a time will get us further faster, without unnecessarily raising anyone’s hackles or alerting anyone beyond the most discreet officials to our inquiries.”

Reluctantly, the others had agreed and had left it to him to formulate and ask the questions about the shares.

Meanwhile, Stokes and Barnaby would pursue the alibis of Walter and the Halstead men, while Penelope, accompanied by Griselda, would confirm Constance Halstead’s, Caroline Halstead’s, and Cynthia Camberly’s alibis, purely to ensure they hadn’t missed some connection.

As Stokes had somewhat grimly growled, “After this business with Walter, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found some other irregularity within that family, something else that has nothing to do with the murders.”